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Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research

Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research

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Analyzing environmental and economic variables of climate change vulnerability in Mongolia

As a result of climatic variability and the impacts of climate change, in the last forty years, Mongolian ecosystems have been altered. Climate change has affected desertification, water supply and natural disasters. Mongolia’s livestock sector is more vulnerable to climate change due to its high dependence on weather and climatic conditions. Based on a literature review of the climate change vulnerability studies conducted in Mongolia and around the world, 2B environmental, agricultural, social, and economic variables were previously determined. The purpose of this research is to analyze 13 environmental and economic variables including drought, dzud, aridity, vegetation change, desertification, pasture use, loans, savings, non-performing loans, index-based livestock insurance, health insurance, social insurance, and number of cooperative members in Khovd, Bayankhongor, Dundgovi prefectures at the soum level. Necessary meteorological, environmental, and statistical data were collected for 10-30 years depending on the availability. Different indexes representing above-mentioned variables were calculated and normalized. Research result shows that there are no clear Increasing or decreasing trend in the drought-dzud index and the aridity index in most of the scums. As for the loans, savings, non-performing loans, indexed livestock insurance, and number of cooperative members, all of them have an increasing trend. These indexes varied greatly among different scums of the prefecture depending on their location, administrative role, climate zones etc. It is important to understand the relationship between different vulnerability variables in the future to accurately assess the vulnerability to climate change. This result is the base for conducting integrated climate change vulnerability/risk assessment, as well as understanding the cause of vulnerability in rural areas of Mongolia.